Normalizing with GoldWave

[evon]

I use Live to record, mix and process my tracks but I use Goldwave editor to normalize amy tracks. However, I notice that when I play my tunes on MySpace the volume on my tracks is much lower than those of the other artistes. Could anyone tell me why is this?

[laird]

Perhaps you will become the latest warrior to take up arms in
the loudness wars!

also see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

[evon]

OK the loudness war is not new to me but reading that article sort of brought home what is actually happening...and this seems to be in the area of hard limiting/compression before normalizing.

[laird]

that was the point, yeah.

Some judicious use of the compressor, followed possibly by a limiter, on the master track might help you out.

Too much ,though, and people will start to complain your music lacks dynamics/contains lots of signal clipping/etc...

[leedsquietman]

Normalizing is your problem.

Read up on how to compress and limit, find some good plugins or external hardware that can do the job and play around and around and retweak until you get a good balance of loud/levels without ruining your mix by hypercompression, then you will have loud but no dynamics, a flat, totally unpunchy sound. There is no EASY button. Look at RMS values. You can normalize a mix and depending on the music and the overall levels it might be -10 rms or -20 rms when finished.

You should be aiming for -10 to -11 db rms if you want your mix to sound competitive with commercial releases. However, getting your music pumped up to these levels without killing your mix is a delicate balance. You need to have recorded everything as well as you can in your DAW mix.

Getting good metering helps, Live like most DAWS has very basic metering. The metering in dedicated audio editors such as Wavelab and SOundforge, Ozone etc. with their analytical tools makes it easier to get a good result.

[evon]

Thanks, you all for your replies. I think leedsquietman's comment sounds closer to what the solution might be for me. I should try to get some better quality plugs.

I use GoldWave, but thier metering might be suspect.
Incidentally, I tried some realy extreme limiting and compressing on some tracks last night and my experiments failed, but at the same time they opened up some new approaches I would like to explore,eg. like using a multiband compressor, but themain thrust is to find a balance between loudness and Dynamics.

[jeskola]

[Montgomery]

LoooooL jeskola!

[evon]

Well Well...we've come a long way since then

[Tarekith]

And lost some good friends along the way....

[H20nly]

^


what's up evon!